Terminator: Day Four
by Daniel Trump
Summary: Jon and Demian face imprisonment at the hands of Skynet. How will they handle this?


Terminator: Day Four

a fan fiction by Daniel Trump

If you like this please buy my novel Impressions of Suburbia on . I worked very hard and this is how to thank me. I only make money on the novels that you buy. The fan fiction is free.

I, Damian Wayne, sat in prison. I asked to see Cameron Phillips. I knew that she might help me. She helped all sorts of people. I had liked the Resistance for a long time. They stood, often silently, thinking, for hours at a time. They didn't understand humans, and humans didn't understand them. They were the silent protectors, the people that helped us, that did things for reasons we would never understand. Cameron Phillips fought for us more than anyone possibly could, but I still sat in a prison.

The terminators were programmed by Jon Connor to help us and the Resistance, and I knew that they cared for him and anyone connected to him. I loved her. I wanted her to be an avenging angel - someone come from above with advanced abilities, someone to help and save me and teach me to stand up to everything dark and awful about the world. I sat in my room in Arkham Asylum. I knew that the guard was honest and good - which didn't help me at all. I could use a corrupt prison guard right now to help me escape. I had to know the layout of the prison to know how to escape - like the nearest exit.

I knew that I would sit here for a long time. Suddenly someone walked into the waiting area outside of my cell. He was a teenager with a suit, a real suit, one of the expensive ones. He smiled. He looked at me.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Nate Archibald. I'm in charge of investigating your singular case. You are unique, Carl."  
"I'm Demian Wayne," I said. "I'm Bruce Wayne's son. I'm not Carl anything."

"You are Carl Woke," Nate said. "You killed sixty-eight nonhumans yesterday."

"What?" I asked. "No, I didn't. I didn't do anything like that. This is stupid. Let me out, now. Let me out of here. I fight bad guys. I do hero work. You need me out there to catch Lex Luthor, the Joker, and their kind of villains. You need me."

"Afraid I'm not interested in hiring you," Nate said. "Professor X read your mind. He says that you, Carl Woke, killed sixty-eight innocent nonhumans. The evidence was processed correctly. You, sir, are guilty. Demian Wayne, meanwhile, is with his girlfriend, the beautiful Peyton Sawyer. She is a gifted artist and fan of rock music. She's a goddess, and she loves him, and knows to hate you. You are a villain, twenty-five, and trying to replace a boy. I just wanted to let you know that you have been found guilty and will do life in this place."

"Oh," I said. "And if it's framed?"  
"What's framed?" he asked.

"The telepathy," I said. "Someone framed it."

"Oh?" he asked. "I hadn't heard that one in a while."

"It's framed," I said. "Professor X wouldn't lie, and I'm innocent, so the telepathy is framed. You need to tell him to check it."  
"Fine," Nate said. "We will see what he decides. I will check the telepathy in a little while. I'm on it. The things I do for people."

"Thank you," I said. "Please investigate correctly. I'm innocent; you should realize that."  
"Bye," Nate said.

Nate left the waiting area. I sat there, in prison. I looked at the guard. He didn't look at me. He didn't care about me. I sat there, waiting. I did some mild exercises to keep in shape. Then, an hour later, someone else walked into the room. A man wore a tank top and blue jeans and had mutton chop sideburns. He had dark hair and looked angry.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Logan. You wanted to talk about the telepathy?"

"Yeah," I said. "It's framed. I'm Demian Wayne, not Carl Woke. Professor X wouldn't ever lie, so someone has framed his power."  
"This is a serious accusation," he said. "Lex Luthor is alleging that your family and their allies have framed him and are making this up."

"I thought that he wanted to protect Earth from the big bad aliens. That's the guy that you are listening to?"  
"No," Logan said. "No, I'm not listening to him, I'm investigating him, and frankly, he seems to want to defend his people. I understand that, completely."

I groaned. "You don't think that Lex Luthor is framing the telepathy?"

"No," Logan said. "I don't think that he is framing the telepathy. He says that he is a hero. He is trying to save the humans. We're trying to save the mutants. We sympathize."  
"He's guilty," I said. "He murdered Superman. Someone had to resurrect him."

"Superman," he said. "Yes. The kryptonian. The X-Men have heard of him. He thinks that he is above everyone else, a god. He lets people worship him."  
"I don't think that's true," I said. "I don't think that he wants anyone to worship him."

I, John Connor, sat in a Skynet prison camp. I looked at the person in my room with me, Kyle Reese.  
"You need to learn how to fight," I said. "Okay?"  
He nodded. "I don't know how you think that we can beat them," he said. "They have the numbers, they have terminators, and they know everything. They're way smarter than us."

"Not smarter," I said. "They just think differently. They just think things like math better than us. They are smart at certain fields. They aren't smarter than us."

"Um, yes, they are," Kyle said. He wore prison garb and started to dig up a hole and put some devices into the ground, devices that we didn't understand, but that we were allowed to touch and put into the holes in the ground. "They know everything about us. They watch us at all times."

"No," I said. "They don't. They don't pay attention to us all the time. They don't do that. We can talk about anything, and they won't pay attention to it."

We worked through the day, digging holes and putting devices into the ground and then burying the devices by putting dirt on top of those items. We did this, for the machines, over and over. They watched us, not moving for hours at a time, giving us the essentials, just letting us live. They didn't kill us, just watched and controlled our every life decision. I dug holes for them while teaching Kyle how to make weapons, how to fight the enemy, how to hide from the machines, how to be a person who didn't work for the machines and their view of reality, a view in which we normal humans didn't matter, in which the technology for our lives trickled down from the machines at the top of the world, giving us a little food and water and a small place to live and some baubles to distract us from a terrible existence.

We found a supply shed and some supplies. I began to fashion a bomb out of some of the materials. I put the bomb at the edge of the prison. Kyle and I told everyone to run for it when the bomb blew a hole in the wall. We waited. The bomb exploded, shattering the wall. We began to run for the exit, with a lot of people yelling victory. We ran through the hole in the wall and then -

Then I appeared in a cell, unable to move, unable to speak. My arms were held by some mechanical devices. I was in a mechanical suit in which I couldn't move or speak. A human, Nate Archibald, walked into the room and looked at me.

"You almost got away," he said. "You're quite clever. It took Professor X and all his mental powers to catch you. I was surprised." He started to drink an expensive beer, sipping it. "I'm drinking a victory beer to celebrate that we beat you."

I sat there, in the cell, waiting to die. I watched the days pass by - I saw the sun for a few hours in a window in front of me. I noticed the guard playing games on his phone all day long, occasionally talking to his wife on the phone. He left and the night guard showed up, texting on his phone to his girlfriend all night long. I sat there, unable to function.

I watched the days and nights pass for three weeks before I realized that no one was rescuing me. I realized that I might die in here, unable to escape, unable to find a solution to this problem. I sat here and began to tell stories in my head, fantasy epics about soldiers with plate armor and longswords fighting dastardly villains and saving the realm. In my stories the good guys won all the battles and saved the day every time - I fought hard with myself for that. I wanted to believe that something good could happen. I reminded myself daily that I had lived a fun, good life with friends and family, and that I should be grateful for that and that they might be having a full life while I sat there, waiting for rescue.

I thought about the concept of right versus wrong a lot while in there. I knew that anyone should not do what someone was doing to me. I knew right from wrong, and this was wrong. Skynet needed to die. Skynet couldn't possibly understand the basics of decision making. I knew that I needed to try to educate people not to do things like this, human or artificial intelligence, hero or villain. Did we do this to people? Did heroes lock up people for years and years, for killing someone or trying to take over? This was bullshit. I didn't want to lock anyone up, not for anything, not anymore. I hated fighting now. I hated my life now. I tried to stay positive, but it was harder and harder, day after day, week after week, month after month.

Nate Archibald showed up after a month had passed. He wore jeans and a t-shirt and didn't carry a beer. He walked up to my cell.

"I'm sorry about this," he said. "Lex can't risk you speaking or communicating with the world. You might run the racists of the world from this cell. He can't have that. I wish that I could help."  
I stood there, unable to move, unable to speak. Nate paused. "I'm sorry. I can't release you. I can't help you. I'm sorry, Jon. We used to be friends. I'm sorry about this. I also have something to tell you. I made you two a year in stopped time. I'm sorry. I wanted to make sure that you did some time. I'm restarting time now. Again, Jon, I'm sorry about this."

I couldn't move or speak.

Several minutes later I appeared at home, at the town home where my mom and I had lived before Judgment Day, when Skynet had nuked the world and taken over, four days ago for everyone but me - a year ago for me.

Mom walked into the room with Cameron Phillips.

"Nate was right," Cameron said. "You weren't going to do much time. We rescued you a few minutes after he made you do a year. His strategy was excellent."

"Damn it, Cameron," I said. "You don't think that was a little brutal of him?"  
"Yes," Cameron said. "He fights to win. We fight to win. That's all we do, all we should do. Why would we pull our punches?"  
"To do the right thing?" I asked.

"Why?" Cameron asked.

"Because it's nice to be a good person?"

"Why?" Cameron asked.

"Forget it," I said. "We need to rescue Demian Wayne. He's locked up, too, and I don't want him to do a year like I did."


End file.
